


playground love

by extasiswings



Series: playground love [1]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Canon Compliant, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23520424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: The tsunami changes everything.Well, no.  That’s not strictly true.  More accurately, the tsunami changes nothing, except for the part where afterwards Buck startsnoticingthings that he never really let himself think about before.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Series: playground love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696435
Comments: 51
Kudos: 688





	playground love

**Author's Note:**

> I just binged all of this in like two days and I am in this now with full clown makeup on. I hate the lawsuit nonsense with a passion because it is so wildly inaccurate and bad that the writers should be ashamed of themselves for writing it AND YET my brain said "yes, but what if they kissed before all that" so here we are anyway.

The tsunami changes everything.

Well, no. That’s not strictly true. More accurately, the tsunami changes nothing, except for the part where afterwards Buck starts _noticing_ things that he never really let himself think about before.

Things like the way his mouth goes dry when he stares too long at the way Eddie’s shirts fit across his shoulders, or the way he swallows a little harder at the sight of Eddie’s fingers absentmindedly playing with the neck of a beer bottle. One night, he’s lying in bed staring up at the ceiling thinking about Eddie’s hand squeezing his shoulder, about the soft look in Eddie’s eyes when he said, _”There’s nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you,”_ and his pulse starts racing and he ends up getting up to google, _do blood thinners cause heart palpitations_. 

And then, one night he’s over at Eddie’s, Christopher on the couch between them giggling at something in the movie Buck has only been half-paying attention to, and Eddie catches his eyes over the top of Christopher’s head and flashes a grin, Buck’s stomach fills with butterflies, and he realizes—

Oh.

Oh, _hell_.

The thing is, Buck has always vaguely known that he’s not completely straight. He’s only dated women, sure, but that’s mostly because it’s easier, not because he’s opposed to the idea of branching out. 

But Eddie…

When Buck thinks about it, _really_ thinks about it, he has to admit he’s had feelings for Eddie for awhile. And in a way, that makes perfect sense because Eddie is gorgeous and smart and good and his best friend, and Christopher is an amazing kid who Buck would take a bullet for, and who wouldn’t go a little weak-kneed and fluttery under the circumstances? But on the other hand, for all Buck knows, _Eddie_ is straight, and even if he isn’t, that doesn’t mean he would be interested in Buck, and is it worth the risk to their relationship, to Christopher, to tell Eddie how he feels when it could go phenomenally badly?

No.

So...the answer is easy. He just won’t say anything. Everything can stay the way it’s always been.

Easy. 

Except it isn’t because now that Buck knows how he feels, it’s impossible to un-know it, impossible not to go hot every time Eddie touches him or smiles at him or catches him staring. Impossible not to stare in the first place. Impossible not to want him, especially when Buck has nothing but time on his hands to think about the fact that he’s probably been crushing on Eddie since the beginning, to wonder what it would be like to kiss him, to wake up with him, to be loved by him.

But. He manages. For awhile. He shoves it down and eventually tries to distract himself with whatever laughable substitute for his job he’s allowed to do and keeps going to Eddie’s and spending time with Christopher and living his life.

Easy. Simple.

At least...until he blows it all up.

* * *

“Buck?”

Buck swears under his breath and turns around as Eddie opens the door, thwarting his instinct to run away after knocking and pretend he never came.

“Hey. Sorry, I know it’s late, I—”

“It’s okay,” Eddie says, brow furrowing as he looks Buck over. “I thought you were having dinner with Bobby and Athena tonight—what’s wrong?”

“I—” Buck blows out a breath and rubs a hand over his face. Eddie steps back and opens the door wider, grabbing Buck’s wrist to pull him inside.

“Come on.”

“Chris—”

“He’s already asleep, don’t worry about it. Go sit on the couch, we’ll have a drink, you can tell me what happened, okay?”

Buck nods once, allowing himself to be gently pushed in the direction of the living room before Eddie disappears into the kitchen. It only takes a minute before he comes back, passing Buck the second beer in his hands before settling next to him on the couch.

Eddie doesn’t push as Buck spends several minutes in silence, alternating drinking and picking at the label on the bottle. Instead, he just waits, patiently sipping at his own beer in solidarity until Buck sighs.

“It wasn’t the Department,” he says. “That made the call that I shouldn’t be allowed to go back to work. It wasn’t—or at least it wasn’t mostly the Department. It was Bobby. He made the call.”

“Shit,” Eddie sighs. Buck drains the rest of the beer and sets the empty bottle on the table.

“Yeah. Thinks he’s saving me from myself or something like that, like I’m a little kid who needs protecting instead of a grown adult who just wants to do his job. I thought if anyone would have my back—”

Buck breaks off and puts his head in his hands.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he mumbles through his fingers. “I did everything—the casts, the surgeries, the PT—I worked so hard, for months, and for what? I just—”

Eddie’s hand falls to his shoulder and squeezes.

“We’ll figure it out, Buck,” he says quietly. “It’ll be okay.”

Buck lifts his head and swallows hard as he meets Eddie’s eyes.

“I’m scared,” he admits. “I’m scared it won’t be. If I can’t even trust the people I thought I could count on the most to be on my side—”

“You can trust me,” Eddie assures. “I’m on your side.”

Later, Buck blames a lot of things—his heightened emotional state, the beer, their close proximity, the look in Eddie’s eyes—but the truth is, in that moment, all the reasons he’s been telling himself for weeks for why he shouldn’t let Eddie know how he feels simply fly out of his head.

So, he sways forward and kisses him.

For half a moment, Eddie kisses back, his hand sliding from Buck’s shoulder around the back of his neck.

Then, he freezes. And panic drops like ice into Buck’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says, pushing himself back so there’s at least some space between them. “Sorry, fuck, I shouldn’t have—”

“Buck.” Eddie’s eyes are distant, the look on his face odd, like he’s trying to put a puzzle together. “Don’t—just—give me a minute. I—”

“Daddy?” Christopher’s voice comes from down the hall, far enough that Buck knows he wouldn’t be able to see anything even if there was anything to see, but that doesn’t stop him from ripping the rest of the way apart from Eddie.

Eddie starts, looking over his shoulder at the hall, then back at Buck. “I—”

“Go,” Buck says, shoving his hands in his pockets and forcing a smile. “I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Buck…”

“Go,” he repeats, and with one final look, Eddie pushes himself off the couch and heads down the hall.

Buck listens until he hears the door close, Eddie’s voice shifting to low, soothing murmurs. Then he grabs his keys and runs out as fast as his feet will carry him.

His phone rings after he gets home again.

_Eddie._

Buck doesn’t answer. A minute later, it buzzes with a text.

_Can we talk?_

Buck stares at the message, his fingers hovering over the keys as he tries to think of a response. He stares long enough that the screen dims, then goes dark, and finally he sighs and tosses the phone aside.

What is there to say anyway? He doesn’t need to talk to know he ruined everything. There’s no putting the cat back in the bag, there’s no fixing it.

But, there is one thing he can fix.

And just like that, Buck digs the lawyer’s card out of the recycling bin.

* * *

_Buck?_

_Are you really not going to text me back?_

_I don’t know what you’re thinking but I swear I just want to talk. Call me. Or come over._

_Just heard something from Bobby about a lawsuit? What the hell is going on?_

_Buck. Talk to me._

_Fine. Do what you want._

Every day after the lawsuit is filed, Buck scrolls back through his texts—from Hen, from Chim, from Eddie—knowing he shouldn’t respond but wanting to anyway. Eddie’s make him wince the most though, the transition from the aftermath of the kiss through the last message—the one that feels like a door being slammed in his face, even though Buck knows he was technically the one who shut it—closing his throat with shame. 

He’s typed out apologies more times than he can count, never sending them. He’s left his thumb hovering over the call button for ages without pressing it. He’s stared up at the ceiling at night thinking about what it felt like to kiss Eddie, even for just a few seconds, and he’s wondered what Eddie really would have said after _give me a minute_ if Christopher hadn’t interrupted, if Buck hadn’t run away.

He wonders if maybe it wouldn’t have been anything bad after all.

And then, the grocery incident happens.

_”Do you have any idea how much Christopher misses you?_

And Buck calls.

At first he doesn’t register the line picking up, but as the silence stretches on and the call stays connected, he realizes.

“I’m sorry,” he says before Eddie can hang up. “For the hearing, for the lawsuit, for Christopher—I’m so sorry.”

More silence, and then—

“You know, when I said I was on your side, I meant it,” Eddie replies. “I would have helped you. But instead of letting me, or any of us, you ran away and did this.”

Buck swallows hard. “Earlier, when we were fighting, you didn’t—you didn’t say anything about…”

Eddie makes a sound Buck can’t decipher, and there’s another moment of silence.

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says finally, after clearing his throat. “It’s generally considered kind of shitty to out someone in front of their coworkers. And it’s not like you ever called me back to talk about it.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Buck admits. “I thought I’d fucked up.”

“Did you mean it? When you kissed me?” 

Even with distance between them, even with the lawsuit, even with the understanding that Eddie could very well never forgive him for selling out the whole team to get his job back, it still feels like a loaded question.

But. If he’s already fucked up as it is, Buck isn’t sure he has that much more to lose.

“Yeah,” he says. “I meant it.”

On the other end of the line, Eddie exhales slowly.

“Okay.” 

“Okay?” Buck asks.

“I’d rather finish this discussion in person,” Eddie says. “So...yeah. Okay. Figure out the rest of your shit and maybe then we can talk.”

“You’re not mad?”

Eddie snorts. “I’m plenty mad. But not about you kissing me.”

And then, he hangs up before Buck can unstick his tongue enough to respond.

* * *

After that, Buck sends texts, calls, does almost everything he can think of, but Eddie never responds. But, on his first day back at work, he knows Eddie can’t avoid him completely.

Or so he assumes. Until he gets to the end of the shift and realizes he’s accomplished exactly nothing and seen far less of his team than he anticipated.

But finally, he gets a shot.

“So that’s just how it’s going to be now?” Buck calls after Eddie. “You’re just gonna keep on ghosting me?”

“I don’t think you have a whole lot of ground to talk about ghosting people, Buck,” Eddie replies. “And I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I just want you to talk to me,” Buck replies. “Even if it’s just to say that you’re still mad.”

“That’s it?”

Buck shrugs. “Well, I—I mean, I want to finish the conversation we started on the phone the other day,” he says. “The one you said you didn’t want to have over the phone.”

Eddie glances around, running a hand through his hair. Finally, he takes a step closer.

“I have a kid, Buck,” he says quietly. “A kid who loves you a whole hell of a lot. A kid who misses you and doesn’t understand when I try to explain that you couldn’t see him because of a lawsuit.”

“I know that,” Buck replies. “And I’m sorry, I can’t say how sorry I am—”

Eddie holds up a hand. “Just—let me finish. I have a kid. Which means, I can’t fuck around with relationships. I can’t bring people into his life if they aren’t going to stay.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere—”

Buck cuts off when Eddie fixes him with a look.

“I didn’t know how I really felt about you until you kissed me,” Eddie continues. “And then you ran away and I couldn’t even talk to my best friend, let alone anything else. Ten years ago, sure, I could play those games left and right, but Buck, I can’t just—”

“How do you really feel?” Buck asks, feeling entirely too warm.

Eddie laughs and looks away, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Of course that’s what you got from that,” he teases. “How do you think?”

“I think I need to hear you say it.”

There’s no one around, which means there’s no one to see Eddie close the distance in several steps and kiss him thoroughly enough that Buck can’t mistake a thing.

“I want that,” Eddie says when he pulls back. “I want you. But I need you to be serious because Christopher—”

“I am,” Buck swears. “I am serious. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, about all of this. Whatever it takes for you to forgive me—”

“I forgive you.”

“And Christopher?”

Eddie shrugs. “Come over. Bring a pizza. He won’t hold a grudge.”

Buck grins and kisses him again. And when they leave the station, they stop for pizza.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "playground love" by Josef Salvat.


End file.
